For marketers, AR filters can drive engagement and awareness

Bad news for anyone who hates virtually trying on Warby Parker glasses: TikTok recently made it easier to create AR filters.

In April, the platform made Effect House, its AR tool for creating filters and effects, available to all creators and brands, although it’s still in beta.

AR filters have essentially become e-commerce tools for fashion and beauty brands, allowing people to virtually test out products before purchasing them. Half of US adults have used or expressed interest in using AR or VR while shopping, but only 4% use it regularly, per eMarketer.

But what about the AR filters that aren’t used for e-commerce? According to marketers we spoke with, they can still be valuable engagement and awareness drivers for brands.

Chasing rainbow-mouth waterfalls

Eric Dahan, CEO and co-founder of influencer marketing agency Open Influence, told Marketing Brew he’s created AR filters before for brands like Crocs and Google. He said the benefits of these types of filters are “definitely indirect,” explaining that AR filters can help improve top- and mid-funnel marketing efforts.

Take Macy’s 2021 Pride out-of-home campaign, for instance. The retailer painted rainbow QR codes on the sidewalk outside of its flagship store in New York. After scanning the code, users could find a Macy’s Pride filter on their Instagram.

Annelise Campbell, CEO and founder of influencer talent agency Campbell Francis Group, has worked on AR filters for Fortune 500 CPG brands like Lifewtr and Nars. Campbell told us that she expects marketers to start to integrate AR filters into experiential activations as in-person events resume this year, saying that they work well for some brands in terms of getting content shared.

HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar told us he thinks the value in AR filters comes from tying them to a bigger campaign or initiative. “It’s not something that works really well as a standalone,” he said, adding that he sees the filters as branding tools that marketers can use to differentiate their social media campaigns from the masses. The Macy’s filter, for instance, was tied to its larger annual “Pride + Joy” campaign.

Filters can also provide marketers with additional insights on those campaigns, according to Campbell. When she was creating AR filters for Snapchat, she was able to see the number of uses and time spent with each filter, letting her better understand how much the campaign resonated with users as a whole. TikTok provides similar metrics, including views, posts, plays, likes, and shares.

The TikTok of it all

If any given TikTok can go viral at a moment’s notice, could that apply to TikTok AR filters, too? Some marketers think so.

TikTok’s ability to spread sounds across the internet like wildfire via user-generated content could make AR filters particularly attractive, especially as it invests more in them with tools like Effect House, Dahan said.

Take Microsoft 365’s stab at an AR filter made with Effect House, for instance. The company made an effect of the Microsoft Outlook icon that “turns your head into one of six app icons so you can personify anxiety around 9am Monday meetings from Teams’ POV or complain about someone in the group not pulling their weight with PowerPoint,” Lisa Gruber, associate director of communications at VMLY&R, the agency that worked with Microsoft to create these effects, told us.

As of mid-June, per data VMLY&R shared with us, Microsoft’s effects on TikTok had been viewed nearly 900,000 times and reproduced nearly 84,000 times—and that’s without any paid spend behind them. The team could activate paid creators to use them in future campaigns, though, Gruber shared.

“For those viral moments and discoverable moments, there is definitely an element of just reaching the consumer differently that could be really impactful for brands,” Campbell told us, explaining that brands could see increased reach and visibility from how discoverable their filters have the potential to become on TikTok.